Perspective ✌🏽✨❤️

Bring your daughter to work day✨❤️✌🏽 * * I own a holistic counseling business, and during my pregnancy, I stopped doing sessions towards the end of my second trimester for my own mental health. I realized that pregnancy requires a lot of psychological, physical and spiritual energy. I learned to give myself grace, and this allowed me to flow through the challenges of pregnancy. I had to learn how to release guilt, and as I was growing my tiny human I realized that I was also shedding the skin of the woman that I was prior to meeting her. This does not mean that I could not take the qualities about myself that I loved, but I had no idea the second I saw her my life would forever be changed. In the birthing community, there’s a lot of talk about having an exclusively “positive” birth story or a “traumatic” birth story. One extreme or another. Like birthing a human could be either good or completely bad. As a melinated mama, everything I looked for online about preparing for my birth, was very scary. There were several articles about mortality and frightening statistics. Everywhere I turned even in the black space I experienced FEAR.😳🥵 * * I wanted to create a safe space for all women to talk about their concerns and their strengths during pregnancy, because it consist of both🤘🏽 The truth is…. My labor was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life, not just because of the physical requirements, but because of the psychological strengths required to go into the birthing space. Here are three things that helped me through my labor. #1💎- Hypnobirthing & daily affirmations! This was a huge help. I had affirmation cards all over the delivery room, and my husband kept telling me that I was a bad ass and this was so amazing I had been doing mirror work the entire time. #2✨- My support team which consisted of my sister, doula, and my husband. Honestly, having a Doula was a game changer! We had two of them, one that was virtual and one that was an in person. I wouldn’t change this ever! #3🦄- Embracing the duality of this experience and utilizing sensory deprivation techniques, such as float tanks, dark showers with a shower chair. This would help me daily whenever I feel overwhelmed. I could have some space to myself to process my emotions and to release all of the negative energy in the shower. I would have candles lit on the counter, and play my meditation music as well.